The Quiet Girl    5 stars

The Quiet Girl is the third award winning movie featuring the Irish I have seen this year, the others being The Banshees of Inisherin and Aftersun. This one actually deserves more attention than it received having been nominated for Best International Feature at The Academy Awards. The film is the first by writer/director Colm Bairead and is one of the most emotional ones I have seen lately. We meet Cait (newcomer Catherine Clinch) a girl of 9 or 10 who is painfully shy and who obviously has a tough life both at home and school. At home she lives with her parents and five siblings on a farm where money is short as is any empathy. Her father is both a drunkard and a gambler and not much of a farmer either. He even complains about how much his children eat. Now her mother is pregnant with the sixth child. The parents agree that in order to make things more manageable, Cait should spend a few months with a relative on a distant rural farm where she can be cared for until the baby arrives. There is no explanation of why her and not any of the other children. The relatives are an older couple and are obviously better off financially than Cait’s family. The woman, Eibhlin (Carrie Crowley) provides attention and care to young Cait like she has never had before. The man, Sean (Andrew Bennett) is at first aloof but then warms up to her, allowing her to help out on the dairy farm and challenging her to run to retrieve the mail as fast as she can. They even buy her new clothes and shows. Cait is still shy through this, clearly a cry for help, but gradually she becomes more talkative, using the dialect of Gaeilge. (Fortunately, the entire movie uses subtitles.) Eventually, we learn of events from the couple’s past that bring these people closer together. It is never forgotten that this arrangement is temporary which makes the ending of the film a truly memorable and emotional moment. The Quiet Girl should especially be seen by anyone who is a parent as well as a wider audience. It could have easily received a nomination for Best Picture. I hope that we see more from director Colm Bairead in the future.